IOT Connectivity with Cloud Services

Internet of Things (IoT) as we know is the interconnection of physical devices/gadgets like vehicles, home appliances, machines over the network or internet. Almost all 'things' in IoT do contain certain common components that allow them to connect to network and be controlled over it. These components include microcontroller or microprocessor based hardware, programming capabilities, various sensors & actuators, and connectivity options. In this article we are discussing two IOT platforms that save a lot of time and money when it comes to connection to the cloud for building IoT applications. These are API development hardware and Portable software agent.

API Development Hardware
With the pre-registering access to Google cloud, UrsaLeo cloud development kit allow engineers to build large number of cloud enabled commercial applications. The kit comes with cloud connected hardware, hardware gateway and standard sensors. You can put your sensor data to cloud and services like dashboard and email alerts allow you to access your sensors’ data at ease. Various applications of the kit include Diagnostics in automobile, Healthcare applications like patient monitoring, Data monitoring and logging in industrial machines and wireless sensors nodes etc.

Fig. 1 The UrsaLeo Cloud Development Kit (Source Ref. 1)

The kit comes with temperature sensor, humidity sensor, UV sensor, pressure sensor, indoor air quality sensor, gas detection sensor, and digital microphone. It supports Zigbee, and Bluetooth low energy (BLE) communication. Fig. 1 is a picture of UrsaLeo that is available from Mouser Electronics and RS Components.

Portable Software Agent
To simplify connection to cloud, Ayla Networks is another platform. It allows users to choose any cellular or Wi-Fi module and connect it to Ayla IOT cloud without any detailed certification process. Ayla just produces source code to map programming on a particular network module. Figure 2 shows how a communication module pre-loaded with a portable software agent facilitates connectivity to the cloud.

Fig. 2 Cloud Connectivity through Ayla Platform (Source Ref. 2)

Today with these kinds of hardware and software platform available in the market it has becoming easier to build IoT system for any applications. There are many such platforms available in the industry today that facilitate IoT applications.

By: Ms. Monika Parmar - Assistant Professor (ECE), Chitkara University, H.P.

References

1. https://www.ursaleo.com
2. https://www.aylanetworks.com